in one of the best known epics in all Sheban poetry. Says the ballad in part: "Listen my children and you shall hear That the King had most grievously come to harm. One galloped, two galloped, they galloped all three; They arrived at Salhin in the early morning and demanded to see Prince Eni.1 As may be imagined this request threw the palace into a certain confusion. When the envoys persisted on being confronted not only with Prince Eni but also with the Princes Meni, Maini, and Mo, the confusion grew. No one dared confess that the four brothers had just recently come to violent deaths. "Snap out of it!" the messengers kept insisting. "Trot out your Princes." It was Balkis herself, finally, who relieved the delicate tension of the interview. 1 "All, all are gone, the old familiar Princes," she informed them. "There aren't any more.' Now it was the turn of the Heralds to express surprise and indignation. Their leader, Camel King at Arms, was loud in his vituperations against the carelessness of the palace authorities. "What, no Princes!" he stormed. "How come?” Once again Balkis intervened. "The world is so full of a number of Kings!" she remarked. "What's a Prince or two between friends? My hat's in the ring." "But the State?" they objected. It is at this point that so many commentators go entirely off the track in their accounts of what transpired. Losing themselves entirely in the maze of legends surrounding the event they would have one believe that a boy was substituted for the missing Princes and that Balkis, Queen of Sheba, was in reality a man, and in fact never existed at all in her own person. This is sheer nonsense. A boy was apparently substituted, it is true, but that boy was none other than Balkis herself, disguised to resemble Eni. This was all the more easily accomplished since no one at Marib, or in the entire kingdom outside of Salhin palace, had ever seen the King's sons since their earliest infancy, and of course the Heralds were only too ready to wink at this small deception in order to bring their mission to a prompt and satisfactory conclusion. Hornblower entertainingly describes the final scene at Salhin. "Balkis," he says, "dressed in a suit of Meni's clothes in which she looked every inch a Prince and wearing the greater part of his jewelry, could scarcely contain herself for joy. This was, in more ways than one, the crowning moment of her young life, and she was all in a fever of impatience to be gone upon her royal way. 'A camel,' she kept demanding. 'My kingdom for a camel-or do I have to walk a mile for one?' They brought her at last her own white Bactrian, and without waiting for him to kneel she vaulted lightly into the jeweled saddle and put spurs to the beast. 'For Balkis-I mean Eni-and Merry Sheba!' she cried. 'Let's go!' A grunting of camels, a parting cheer, and they were off, hell bent for coronation, as Gorton somewhat crudely puts it." So the caravan sped, like a bird on the wing, over the dunes to Marib, bearing the lass who was born to be Queen. CHAPTER III POMPS AND CIRCUMSTANCES 1 The Heralds, the little Prince-for so one must call the new sovereign of Sheba temporarily-and the long-legged white Bactrian all arrived together in a heap at the top of the grand staircase in the palace at Marib on the following noon. "So this is Marib!" 1 the Prince was heard to remark as he staggered up the stairs. This somewhat unconventional and entirely unexpected entrance was largely due to the early training of the Bactrian who, having been accustomed from his tenderest infancy to ascend staircases at Salhin, saw nothing incongruous about repeating the feat at Marib, all staircases being alike to him. Unfortunately, however, this staircase was not like any other which he had hitherto experienced, being extremely slippery and culminating in a great hall of mirrors in which he saw what appeared to him to be six hundred and fiftytwo other white Bactrians converging upon his person. Whereupon he let fly with all four legs 1Annals of Sheba, cylinder 7004. Held at once, greatly inconveniencing the Heralds, and slid unceremoniously up to the very feet of Shenanikin who was awaiting the royal arrival, surrounded by the court. "Safe at home!" said the latter. "I am your uncle Shenanikin." "Uncle me no uncles," the Prince retorted. "Home was never like this! You'll have to wash your steps. Hello, everybody!" 1 The ice, let alone a large number of mirrors, was broken. The court smiled at this impudent princeling, sitting astride of the spread-eagled camel so disdainfully chewing his cud; the court grinned broadly from ear to ear; the court burst into hilarious laughter. "Yo!" they shouted, slapping each other on the thigh. "A camel come to lodgment!" The popularity of the Prince was assured from that moment, and, before many hours had passed, all Marib, waiting anxiously to learn the trend of the new monarch's possible idiosyncracies, was made aware of his frank, outspoken, unaffected temperament. Vast concourses of people gathered before the approaches of the palace, singing the Sheban national airs and clamoring for a glimpse 1 Ibid. |